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While the shadow economy seems to have both positive and negative effects on a country's macroeconomy, almost all governments have attempted to control the shadow economy to prevent the loss of tax revenues and the attendant impact on the government budget. Even though official development assistance (ODA) has no formal link with the shadow economy, we often observe a relationship between the two in recipient countries. We argue that ODA can increase the size of the shadow economy in recipient countries through both government and individual-level flows of ODA to the shadow economy. We analyzed data on the shadow economies of 107 ODA recipients from 1990 to 2018 using both fixed effect and Driscoll–Kraay estimators. The results show that recipients receiving a higher volume of ODA are more likely to have a larger shadow economy. Moreover, the relationship between ODA and the shadow economy is stronger in more corrupt recipients. We dealt with endogeneity issues using the generalized method of moments, which supported our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent Chinese involvement in small-scale gold mining in Ghana has received wide publicity and scholarly attention. While the literature has focused on environmental sustainability, political accountability, and institutional reforms, it is yet to examine local adoption of Chinese technology and its impact on Ghana's rural economy. We argue that it is in the interstices between the formal economy and entrepreneurship within the informal economy that opportunities for Chinese interventions emerge. Using evidence from Manso Akropong in the Ashanti region and Bole in the Savannah region, this article shows that, while Chinese technology's impact is transformative, the outcomes are divergent in different regions. In Manso Akropong, the intensification of mining backed by Ghanaian–Chinese collaborations has led to the environmental destruction, creating competition between gold mining and cocoa farming that had underpinned Ghana's rural prosperity. In Bole, where less aggressive Chinese technology such as Changfa and rubber mats are incorporated without direct Chinese participation, a more sustainable pattern of growth has emerged. This comparative study suggests that besides the large-scale projects and state-led training programmes, grassroots actors like informal artisanal miners are at the forefront of technology transfer in the China–Africa encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting the use of assistive technology (AT) is crucial for the health and well-being of users, but there is a huge global problem of unmet need for AT. In this context informal (unregulated) providers of AT play a significant role of meeting AT user need, particularly in less-resourced settings. This study draws on research into formal and informal AT provision in low-income urban communities in Indonesia and Sierra Leone to explore the potential of informal providers in addressing unmet need. Specifically, it looks at the different performance of formal and informal providers regarding the availability and the adequacy of AT that they provide. The study concludes by proposing further research into the scope for coproduction of AT between formal and informal providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had large negative effects on countries' economies and individual well-being throughout the world, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Pandemic-related changes in behavior and government restrictions in Kenya may have negatively affected food supply chains and household food access; however, the empirical evidence is currently limited. Objectives: The study explored changes in informal milk markets, dairy consumption, and food insecurity among low-income households in urban and periurban Nairobi, Kenya, following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country. Methods: Baseline data on milk sales and consumption were collected in late 2019 from dairy vendors operating in the informal sector and their dairy customers. We conducted 2 longitudinal telephone surveys with the same study participants in July and September--October 2020, respectively. Results: At the first follow-up, the volume of milk sold by informal vendors had dropped by 30% compared with their baseline level, and the volume of milk from informal markets consumed by households decreased by 23%. By the second follow-up, the volume of milk sold and consumed had recovered somewhat but remained lower than the volume observed 1 y prior in the same season. Large reductions in the consumption of other animal--sourced products were also observed. The rate of food insecurity increased by 16 and 11 percentage points in the first and second follow-up periods, respectively, compared with baseline. Conclusions: The evidence, therefore, suggests that the timing of the pandemic and the related restrictions were associated with a decrease in the supply and consumption of milk from informal markets in Nairobi and a decrease in the food security of periurban consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deputy President William Ruto's victorious presidential campaign in Kenya's 2022 elections saw him champion the plight of the 'hustlers', young informal economy workers on low, piecemeal incomes. Reconfiguring political identities around notions of economic hardship and struggle, Ruto's campaign appeared emblematic of what scholars have recently identified as a turn towards 'populism' in Africa, transmuting ethno-nationalist identities into class-based ones. However, whilst Ruto's campaign capitalized on rising prices to devastating political effect, he also channelled discontent with the Jubilee government and its unmet promises of shared prosperity. Drawing on ethnographic data collected in central Kenya's Kiambu region since 2017, this article understands Ruto's victory not through the lens of 'hustler populism' but rather as an anti-Jubilee 'backlash'. Ruto's campaign took advantage of Uhuru Kenyatta's personal unpopularity as voters increasingly questioned the nature of 'dynastic' authority and 'state capture', seeking to punish Uhuru personally for his failures to create prosperity in the region whilst enriching himself at their expense. Elaborating on these tensions, the article points towards broken 'moral economies' between voters and politicians as a vital field of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can people who work in the informal sector protect property rights and address uncertainties? Street vending forms an essential part of urban economies in developing countries like China, and most street vendors operate outside state regulation. They encounter market-based uncertainties and uncertainties caused by unpredictable enforcement. Empirical data collected in Guangzhou and Guilin suggests that street vendors form private governance organizations to solve resource limitations, allocate pitches and resist government interference. Street vendors who cannot rely on effective private governance organizations may purchase protection from a third party (e.g. agents of the state) to secure informal rights to a particular spot and avoid confiscation of their wares and equipment. This study contributes to existing literature on private governance and informality by empirically examining private governance institutions in an informal economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across global cities of the world, urban spaces of arrival tend to be characterized by a multiplicity of informal practices, and therefore also marginality, being most prevalent in relation to local economic practices, and increasingly more the legal status of foreigner migrants residing in such spaces. This article aims to understand these dynamics in arrival spaces at the margins by exploring both domains in a unique manner. Over recent decades, urban and migration studies have separately given rise to new research that is critical of the pervasive binary views around formal versus informal economies and legal versus illegal migrations. Drawing on this literature, and ethnographic fieldwork carried out in an Istanbul locality that has served as a zone of arrival for varying migration flows over several decades, this article examines how both business proprietors and migrants working and/or residing in the locality actively and continuously re-negotiate their positions within spectrums of in/formality and il/legality. It shows that arrival spaces at the margins are places of intense calculation and that the chosen direction along these spectrums depends on an evaluation of all kinds of social, political, spatial, and temporal factors transpiring at a particular moment and place. In focusing on this processual nature of in/formalities and il/legalities, the article also suggests reconsidering various other dualities, including margins versus center, exclusion versus inclusion, and arrival versus settlement, and argues that the intensity of having to manage one's experiences of these dualities is what really distinguishes inhabiting arrival spaces at the margins in today's global cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of globalization, the informal sector enterprises are also exposed to international competition; and therefore, they need to remain productive and competitive. In this regard, innovation is an obvious strategic choice at the firm level. Drawing from the data gathered through an extensive field survey in NCT-Delhi, India, this study observes that innovation activities in the informal enterprises take place mostly through non-research-and-development routes and rely more on interactive learning and learning by doing. The econometric analysis shows that formal interactions through subcontracting and membership in the industrial associations along with informal interactions with other firms, buyer–supplier interactions, and social capital are having positive and significant influence on product, process, and marketing innovation. However, this study reveals that formal interactions play a vital role in introducing marketing innovations. Further, the results show the essential role of in-house training, entrepreneurial expertise, and information communication technology usage at the firm level. Thus, the paper provides empirical evidence reiterating the importance of integrating informal manufacturing enterprises and their learning processes as the key components of the innovation system in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ghana, as in many African countries, is faced with the challenge of sustainably managing electronic waste (e-waste). The country has a legal framework and is in the process of developing a public policy for e-waste management. However, e-waste management remains a major challenge due to weaknesses in the country's innovation and policymaking process that include inability to cater for the informal sector. This article argues that the current approach to innovation policymaking in Ghana would be inadequate in delivering the goal of sustainable e-waste management. We examine the country's evolving e-waste management regime and the multiple perspectives of actors with respect to their perceived transformative changes and show that these perspectives and expectations are critical for an e-waste policymaking process. We conclude that policy processes adopted in developing countries for e-waste management should be guided by inclusive policymaking approaches that consider perspectives from informal actors to co-create solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sanctions literature has identified numerous mechanisms by which the adverse economic effects of sanctions impact their success rate. This body of work, however, has mostly focused on targets' formal economies and has thus overlooked whether sanctions-induced changes in shadow (also known as informal) economic activity influence sanctions' effectiveness. In this article, we develop two rival arguments that can potentially explain how shadow sector growth affects sanctions' outcomes. Our grievance mitigation theory argues that increased shadow sector activity decreases the political pressure on leaders to capitulate to sanctions, while our disadvantaged democracy theory asserts that shadow economies create budgetary resource demands and deficits that disproportionately hamper democratic targets' ability to resist sanctions. We assess the empirical merits of the two theories using time-series cross-national data for 1950–2005. We find robust evidence that the growth of shadow economies increases the likelihood of sanctions' success in democratic targets while not significantly affecting the success rate of sanctions against non-democratic regimes. Our findings shed new light on the processes by which the economic disruptions and hardships created by sanctions translate into pressure on targeted regimes to concede to sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives Approximately 2 billion workers globally are employed in informal settings, which are characterized by substantial risk from hazardous exposures and varying job tasks and schedules. Existing methods for identifying occupational hazards must be adapted for unregulated and challenging work environments. We designed and applied a method for objectively deriving time-activity patterns from wearable camera data and matched images with continuous measurements of personal inhalation exposure to size-specific particulate matter (PM) among workers at an informal electronic-waste (e-waste) recovery site. Methods One hundred and forty-two workers at the Agbogbloshie e-waste site in Accra, Ghana, wore sampling backpacks equipped with wearable cameras and real-time particle monitors during a total of 171 shifts. Self-reported recall of time-activity (30-min resolution) was collected during the end of shift interviews. Images (N = 35,588) and simultaneously measured PM2.5 were collected each minute and processed to identify activities established through worker interviews, observation, and existing literature. Descriptive statistics were generated for activity types, frequencies, and associated PM2.5 exposures. A kappa statistic measured agreement between self-reported and image-based time-activity data. Results Based on image-based time-activity patterns, workers primarily dismantled, sorted/loaded, burned, and transported e-waste materials for metal recovery with high variability in activity duration. Image-based and self-reported time-activity data had poor agreement (kappa = 0.17). Most measured exposures (90%) exceeded the World Health Organization (WHO) 24-h ambient PM2.5 target of 25 µg m−3. The average on-site PM2.5 was 81 µg m−3 (SD: 94). PM2.5 levels were highest during burning, sorting/loading and dismantling (203, 89, 83 µg m−3, respectively). PM2.5 exposure during long periods of non-work-related activities also exceeded the WHO standard in 88% of measured data. Conclusions In complex, informal work environments, wearable cameras can improve occupational exposure assessments and, in conjunction with monitoring equipment, identify activities associated with high exposures to workplace hazards by providing high-resolution time-activity data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores theoretical and empirical features of informal value transfer systems, the illegal transfer of money between jurisdictions. It identifies the trust relationships between the actors involved and discusses four mechanisms used to signal trustworthiness. It then applies these theoretical considerations to China, where transferring money abroad cannot exceed a limited amount, and the process is costly. While most authors stress the importance of trust, we find that informal mechanisms of credible commitments, such as reputation, repeated interaction, hostage taking and sharing compromising information, are used. These strategies underpin an industry that transfers billions of dollars out of China every year. We found no evidence of use of violence or Mafia involvement. The article is based on field research, interviews with bankers and customers, and a review of official documents and news reports in Chinese and English. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, there has been a major growth in the illegal ivory trade. Although this trade has been analysed from a variety of angles, one perspective is missing in the literature, namely the individual ivory trader. Based on in-depth research among illegal ivory traders in Uganda—which is a major transit point of ivory—this article aims to fill this gap. In doing so, and by linking their activities with the literature on the informal economy and the criminalization of the state, the article shows how various structural circumstances—such as war, globalization and the presence of foreign buyers—had a profound impact on the ways in which the illegal ivory trade was conducted. Initially, these circumstances created an increased market, both in supply and demand, which led many traders to engage in this trade. However, an increased crackdown on the illegal ivory trade has made the conditions much more difficult. By analysing how ivory traders navigate these structural circumstances, the article shows a gradual criminalization of the trade. In other words, the more ivory became criminalized, the more criminal linkages were needed to remain active in the trade, and the more significant power differences became. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores shifting perspectives on African clandestine economies. Previously condemned as products of clientelism and corruption, clandestine economies are attracting renewed interest for their developmental potential in weak state contexts. Focusing on systems of illicit cross-border trade in East and West Africa, this article shows that more favourable views of clandestine trading activities are driven more by their compatibility with liberal reform agendas than by their positive contribution to local development. Indeed, the optimistic turn in perspectives on illicit African trade glosses over its increasingly negative impact on local security and development. While discourses of violence and criminalization were used to characterize the largely peaceful cross-border trading systems in West Africa in the 1990s, new discourses of hybrid governance and state building are used to frame the more violent and socially disruptive cross-border trading complexes of East Africa in the 2000s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]